Hi there friends! A while back Pete Sadler and I did some work looking at the record of eukaryotic diversity in the first two periods of the Neoproterozoic Era. (that paper can be found here) To do those analyses I created a spreadsheet of all of the eukaryotic fossil occurrences from that interval that I…
Author: lariedman
Hey, I was interviewed by Palaeocast!
We chatted about Snowball Earth, life, cats and baking. Here’s the link.
Lanulatisphaera laufeldii
Figure 1. From Porter and Riedman (2016). Lanulatisphaera laufeldii from Chuar Group, Grand Canyon, USA –showing possible ontogenetic variation with progressively longer filamentous processes on exterior of inner vesicle. Genus Lanulatisphaera Porter and Riedman 2016 Type Species.—Lanulatisphaera laufeldii (Vidal, 1976) Porter and Riedman 2016. Diagnosis.—as for type species. Etymology.—From the Latin lanulata, a diminutive for ‘woolly,’…
Culcitulisphaera revelata
Genus Culcitulisphaera Riedman and Porter, 2016 Type species.—Culcitulisphaera revelata, by monotypy. Diagnosis.—As for type species. Etymology.—From the Latin culcitula, meaning small pillow, and sphaera; thus, a sphere covered by small pillows Remarks.—This genus is characterized by the presence of the pillow elements of the vesicle exterior, visible in transmitted light microscopy but best understood…
Acritarchs and their Friends
This section of the site is devoted to the profiles of the actors in our play– the Precambrian microfossils. The most common Precambrian microfossils fall into a group known as the acritarchs. This is a broad group of any single-celled, organic-walled (read: no hard parts like shells), vaguely spheroidal (before preservation) microfossil whose biological placement…
A few words about the Precambrian
Figure 1. Geologic Time Scale The Precambrian Eon (Figure 1: Geologic Time scale) is, by definition, all of time before the start of the Cambrian Period ~541 million years ago. The formation of the Earth occurred ~4.5 billion years ago and the oldest evidence of life is ~3.5 billion years old in layered structures from…
This website exists
now, why is it here?
Leigh Anne Riedman 